Planning, hard work paid off

Democrats won big in Massachusetts Tuesday, but it was never clear until it was over that was going to be the case.

Republicans had gained serious ground, picking up state legislative seats two years ago in the wake of the tea party uprising and the election of Sen. Scott Brown.

While redistricting had thrown a curve at Democrats in Congress, Republicans were counting on winning at least one of the state’s nine seats in the U.S. House of Representatives this time out.

But on election night, Republicans found they had slid backward, losing three seats in the state House of Representatives, including freshman Republicans Stephen Levy of Marlboro and Richard Bastien of Gardner. And the Democrats won all nine congressional seats as President Barack Obama won re-election.

Elizabeth Warren rode the political winds and a massive get-out-the-vote effort to a convincing eight-point victory over Mr. Brown.

“What happened on Tuesday was the end result of a lot of work for a lot of years by a lot of people,” said state Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh. A grass-roots get-out-the-vote effort built over the last three elections and enhanced this year resulted in record turnouts for Democrats.

That grass-roots effort had thousands of volunteers knocking on doors starting in the spring to persuade and identify independent voters leaning toward Ms. Warren. They were then targeted with follow-up visits before the election and visited on their doorsteps in person the day of the election to ensure they voted.

On Election Day in Worcester, more than 400 volunteers worked for the Warren campaign and statewide Democrats estimated about 20,000 volunteers were involved.

But it was not all a numbers game, Mr. Walsh said, although the huge grass-roots efforts helped Ms. Warren force the Brown campaign into the kind of election Republicans wanted to avoid.

“Elizabeth Warren forced that race to change, first by building a grass-roots organization,” he said. Ms. Warren spent an entire month at the start of the campaign meeting quietly with local Democratic organizers around the state to develop active canvassing operations and insisting that minority organizing be incorporated into the campaign operations from the start.

“That became the basis for how Elizabeth Warren forced this election against Scott Brown’s will from an election he hoped would be about style to an election about substance. An election he hoped would be about image, she forced it to be an election about issues,” Mr. Walsh said.

As all that was developing, Ms. Warren’s message about who’s side you are on, resonated more and more as the ad campaigns and debates unfolded, especially among minority voters.

He said before the election Warren campaign volunteers knocked on one million doors around the state. The weekend before the election they hit 242,000 doors and those efforts included a focused effort to register minority voters and get them to the polls in Boston, Worcester, Fitchburg, Southbridge, and other larger cities around the state.

“On Election Day we had over 800,000 door knocks, which is bigger than we have ever done,” he said.

That work was supplemented by independent phone banks by teachers and other unions, canvassing and campaigning by groups like Neighbor to Neighbor and the SEIU union, while the Warren campaign worked phone banks in several languages to firm up votes.

Michelle Wu, political outreach coordinator for the Warren campaign, said a big part of the new turnout came from efforts to talk to, register and follow up with minority voters. That included special efforts in communities like Worcester, Fitchburg and Southbridge with higher minority populations.

Ms. Warren, Mr. Walsh said, relied on minority organizers who looked to get out of their offices to festivals and events to meet perspective voters. He said they also joined up with minority businesses putting signs in their windows. Minority clergy, minority elected officials and minority media outlets were also linked into their efforts to create an active presence throughout the campaign in those communities.

The outreach team based in Worcester extended their efforts to Southbridge and set out to meet people at their homes and where they worked, Ms. Wu said.

“They knocked on every single door in low income housing developments. They visited parents they had known from organizing at their schools. It was every single day, every morning, every night,” Ms. Wu said.

Meanwhile, she said, Ms. Warren also spent lots of time in Central Massachusetts trying to show the importance of the district while highlighting Mr. Brown’s decision not to participate in a debate in Worcester.

The impact was apparent at the voting box.

In Southbridge, Mr. Brown’s support fell from 55 percent in 2010, to 43 percent Tuesday. In Worcester, Mr. Brown’s 2010 vote of 47 percent fell to 38 percent. In Fitchburg, Mr. Brown’s support fell from 59 percent in 2010 to 49 percent in this election.

Mr. Brown, who had won Fitchburg and Southbridge in 2010, lost them this time and in other communities such as Gardner, Leominster, Marlboro and Westboro, Mr. Brown’s lead from 2010 was cut significantly.

Moreover, the higher turnout for Ms. Warren in Worcester offset gains Mr. Brown made in suburbs of the city. Local Democrats said Ms. Warren won the usually low turnout in Worcester’s 10th Ward by 2,485 votes. That number of votes negated Mr. Brown’s margin in Shrewsbury, compared to 2010 when Mr. Brown’s margin of victory in Shrewsbury negated the entire margin for Martha Coakley, his Democratic opponent, in Worcester.

Similar increases in support for the Democratic candidate turned up in other urban areas. In Lowell, Mr. Brown won the city handily in 2010 but lost by 18 points on Tuesday. Ms. Warren also flipped Revere to the Democratic side this election and the margin of Democratic wins were significantly larger in most of the state’s larger cities.

One key local development in Central Massachusetts came in September, after the Democratic National Convention, when local Democrats including Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray and U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern came to a realization that Central Massachusetts would be a key region in the Senate race and concluded the campaigns had to bolster their efforts.

Joined by Candy Carlson of the Democratic City Committee, Mr. Murray and Mr. McGovern held a series of “come to Jesus” meetings with key players in the region to make sure every network and organization in their communities were maximizing outreach to voters.

Unlike a last minute effort in 2010 to buckle down on those efforts, this one came much earlier in the process.